The East Asian crisis and financing corporate investment: is there a cause for concern?

In view of limited empirical evidence concerning the microeconomic aspects of corporate financial problems in the East Asian countries in the 1990s, this paper analyses the financing pattern of corporate investment in Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel of listed firms during the period 1989–1997. By using firm size, retention practices, and leverage as three different indicators of financial constraint on firm investment, we have examined the role of various internal and external financing variables on corporate investment in the sample countries. Results indicate that a large number of sample firms depend on free cash flow, especially in Indonesia; there was also a steady increase in debt-equity ratio in all countries. There were signs of agency costs in the use of cash flow in Korea and Malaysia and also in the use of debt financing in Malaysia and Thailand. There was also sign of over-investment among the Thai firms during 1994–1997 though it appears very little if at all was done to redress it in time.     

Determinants of occupational change and mobility in rural India

With a view to redress the dearth of economic analysis on occupational dynamics in rural household economies, this study examines the nature and characteristics of occupational change and mobility in rural India. Using the unique WIDER data-set from six villages in West Bengal, India the factors causing a change of primary occupation among those who tried to change occupation over a twelve-month recall period has been analysed. Bivariate probit estimates jointly determining the probability of trying to change occupation and having been successful suggest that success in changing occupation depends crucially on socially constructed ‘status’- being older, male, from larger farming families or having higher schooling experience. They also exemplify the effects of regional diversity, levels of prosperity and different patterns of employment between agricultural and non-agricultural activities.     

Strategy-proof club formation with indivisible club facilities

Review of Economic Design - We investigate the strategy-proof provision and financing of indivisible club good facilities when individuals are subject to congestion costs that are non-decreasing in...     

How Much of the Gender Difference in Child School Enrolment Can Be Explained? Evidence from Rural India

There are significant gender differences in child schooling in the Indian states though very few studies explain this gender difference. Unlike most existing studies we take account of the implicit and explicit opportunity costs of schooling and use a bivariate probit model to jointly determine a child's participation in school and market jobs. Results obtained from the World Institute of Development Economics Research (WIDER) villages in West Bengal suggest that indicators of household resources, parental preferences, returns to and opportunity costs of domestic work significantly affect child school enrolment. While household resources have similar effects on enrolment of boys and girls, other arguments tend to explain a part of the observed gender difference. Even after taking account of all possible arguments, there remains a large variation in gender differences in child schooling that cannot be explained by differences in male and female characteristics in our sample.     

An EM algorithm for the destructive COM-Poisson regression cure rate model

In this paper, we consider a competitive scenario and assume the initial number of competing causes to undergo a destruction after an initial treatment. This brings in a more realistic and practical interpretation of the biological mechanism of the occurrence of tumor since what is recorded is only from the undamaged portion of the original number of competing causes. Instead of assuming any particular distribution for the competing cause, we assume the competing cause to follow a Conway–Maxwell Poisson distribution which brings in flexibility as it can handle both over-dispersion and under-dispersion that we usually encounter in count data. Under this setup and assuming a Weibull distribution to model the time-to-event, we develop the expectation maximization algorithm for such a flexible destructive cure rate model. An extensive simulation study is carried out to demonstrate the performance of the proposed estimation method. Finally, a melanoma data is analyzed for illustrative purpose.     

COOPERATIVE MANAGERIAL DELEGATION,R&D AND COLLUSION

Existing literature on managerial delegation indicates that collusive outcomes can be obtained in an oligopoly game through cooperative managerial delegation. In contrast, this paper shows that, if managers are delegated to choose R&D, in addition to choosing production levels, full‐collusive outcomes cannot be achieved through cooperative delegation. Moreover, (i) under cooperative delegation, semi‐collusion always yields lower profit, higher R&D, higher price and lower social welfare than that in the case of competition and (ii) cooperative delegation leads to a higher profit lower R&D, higher price and lower social welfare than the no delegation case, irrespective of product market conduct.     

Ethical evaluations, intentions, and orientations of accountants: Evidence from a cross-cultural examination

Society has high expectations concerning accounting professionals. More than ever, accountants need professional values and ethics that allow them to operate successfully and with integrity in a changing world. This study is a first attempt to understand the ethical evaluations, intentions, and orientations of accounting professionals and students from Latin American countries. Another objective is to validate the multidimensional ethics scale used by Cohen et al. [1998] in an international setting. The results did not validate such a scale but offer interesting findings about the Latin American sample. In such a context, ethics appear to be a collective concern guided by a different concept of equity. The results indicate that the respondents consider justice a superior value over what is considered correct, acceptable, or good.     

The selection of supply chain management projects: A case study approach

Organizations undertake strategic supply chain initiatives through project implementation. However, selecting the right supply chain projects can be difficult due to high levels of organizational risk and technical complexity. Although the literature is rich in quantitative and qualitative methods for project management, prior research into best management practices specific to supply chain management (SCM) project selection is limited. This paper examines the methods used in evaluating and selecting SCM projects used by the management at three publically held multi-national organizations. The primary objective of this research is to identify a set of generalizable good practices in the selection and evaluation of SCM projects. Nine useful business practices in SCM project selection have been identified based on cross-case comparisons and a close examination of the literature. Eight practices had been previously identified, but were scattered throughout the literature on ERP, IT management, and R&D management. A new practice calls for the consideration of supply chain partners’ return-on-investment (ROI) in the project selection process. Highest preference should be given to win-win projects for the organization and its partner(s). The practices identified here sho`uld provide the foundation of practical guidelines that can be used during the planning stage of SCM projects. This paper reduces the knowledge gap in SCM project management by analyzing organizations with significant supply chain experience and synthesizing these results with the current related literature.     

Does competition under Medicare Prospective Payment selectively reduce expenditures on high-cost patients?

Competition and prospective payment have been widely used to control health care costs but may together provide incentives to selectively reduce expenditures on high-cost relative to low-cost patients. We use patient discharge and hospital financial data from California to examine the effects of competition on costs for high- and low-cost admissions in the 12 largest Diagnosis-Related Groups before and after the Medicare Prospective Payment System (PPS). We find that competition increased costs before PPS, but that this effect decreased afterward, especially inpatients with the highest costs.We conclude that competition and PPS selectively reduced spending among the most expensive patients and that careful assessment of these patients' outcomes is important.     

Marketing challenges of technical industries in developing countries

A rapidly changing technology-based industry such as electronics in the environment of a developing country has many unique problems in organizational marketing. The problems and possible strategies under such conditions are discussed in this article.